Visualizing the invisible wall: the impact of the Great Firewall of China on public opinion.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20257324

The thesis is a research project that visualizes the differences of public opinions in various internet ecologies, taking Chinese Internet censorship as an example. The aim of the thesis is to create a visualization displaying showing the shape of the invisible wall, primarily the influence of internet censorship. The target audiences of this visualization are people who are interested in internet censorship or Internet users inside/outside of the firewall. Audiences would have a better understanding of the influence of internet censorship and generate their opinions by exploring the network visualization and case studies. The visualization is a web-based application so that users can share it on social media and get access to the visualization through the internet connection. It introduces the history of the internet of censorship and presentation of case study analysis. The first part is a timeline graph introduces the history of Internet censorship of China. The second part is an interactive visualization containing topic selection, tweets scale comparison from each social media and account types (from the news or normal users' posts) and bullet graphs displaying public opinions.